that occasion been reprimanded by the Inquisitor for suffering nature to get the better of grace; it being an inexcusable weakness, as he observed, to be in any degree affected with the suffering of the body, however great, when afflicted, as they ever are in the Holy Inquisition, for the good of the soul. And it was, I presume, to make trial of the effect of that reprimand, that the execution of this cruel order was committed to me. As I could by no possible means decline it, I summoned all my resolution, after passing an hour by myself, I may say in the agonies of death, and set out a little after two in the morning for my unhappy friend's house, attended by a notary of the Inquisition, and six armed Sbirri. We arrived at the house by different ways and knocking at the door, a maid-servant looked out of the window, and asked who knocked. "The Holy Inquisition," was the answer, and at the same time she was ordered to awake nobody, but to come down directly and open the door, on pain of excommunication. At these words, the servant hastened down, half naked as she was, and having with much ado, in her great fright, opened the door, she conducted us as she was ordered to her master's chamber. She often looked very earnestly at me, as she knew me, and showed a great desire to speak with me; but of her I durst take no kind of notice. I entered the bed-chamber with the notary, followed by the Sbirri, when the lady awakening at the noise, and seeing the bed surrounded by armed men, screamed out aloud and continued screaming as out of her senses, till one of the Sbirri, provoked at the noise gave her a blow on the forehead that made the blood flow, and she swooned away. I rebuked the fellow severely, and ordered him to be whipped as soon as I returned to the Inquisition.